Syd is Alias
- I'm sure I'm not the only person to think this. In Kat's dream...thing...when Alias takes off his mask/helmet thing, she is shocked at his true identity. Syd is the only person I can think of who has enough of Alias's physical likeness to be him and would shock Kat that much. And with him being such an early friend and Nice Guy it's kind of the obvious route to make you feel properly betrayed. Plus there were a couple other suspicious things even fairly early on, my memory's just fuzzy on the details. But what I do remember is that whenever you go up against Alias, I'm pretty sure you never see Syd and Alias in the same area at the same time. Syd always goes off to do something else while you battle Alias, and then conveniently returns as soon as you've taken care of him. In that first mission where you're protecting that star thing, and it turns out to have been replaced with a replica made of candy, I remember there being something about that mission in particular that set off alarm bells, I just don't remember what it was exactly.
- It certainly seemed that way, which was probably deliberate on the creator's part to make it a red herring. At the end of the first mission to stop Alias we see Syd knocked out and Alias having taken his identity to pull off the crime.
- He also seems to recognize Cyanea. He DEFINITELY does not respond the way the normally amicable Syd should to a strange girl wandering up in a crisis.
- Gravity Rush 2 shows that this is confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt. And the reason for his reaction to Cyanea is because he is completely aware of what she is and what she is capable of.
Humans are not native to the World Pillar.
Suspension of disbelief would ask us to not question just how sustainable the World in the Sky is, or how civilization could thrive and eventually create hovercars and printed paper and cinema. Not to mention they know about things like "forests" and "seas" and "horses" in spite of just how isolated the civilizations in this setting are, or how they don't understand how time works up and down the pillar, or a whole host of other things. It's very likely that through space travel or some sudden quantum rift (like the gravity storms) pulled a sizable chunk of humans into this world — perhaps even brought there by the Creators — to the World Pillar where they managed to adapt to this alien plane of existence. Such portals could also explain where all of their resources (food, refined metal, etc) come from.